Hyperconnected, overstimulated, and volatile, today’s users expect a personalized experience from brands—one that combines recognition, relevance, proactivity, and personal attention. Impatient and increasingly demanding, they won’t linger on a site that doesn’t recognize them—especially if they’re already a customer! They see it as normal that brands, which collect more and more data about them, offer a truly unique experience.
This creates new challenges in a time when good UX design and conversion rate optimization are no longer enough to retain customers. Personalization of the customer experience has become essential. So essential, in fact, that 89% of marketers cited it as their main competitive advantage for 2017, according to Gartner’s 2016 report.
But recognizing the importance of personalization and actually implementing it are two different things. Don’t worry though—you just need a bit of method and a clear starting point…
Step 1: Know Your Customers
Before building the perfect customer experience, ask yourself a few fundamental questions:
Who are my customers?
What makes them different?
How can I segment them?
We’re all different—and so are your customers. Taking the time for reflection and analysis upfront isn’t optional; it’s essential. It helps align your efforts with the expectations of different customer profiles, so you don’t end up scrapping beautifully designed journeys that miss the mark.
Defining customer segments is the first crucial step before launching personalized experiences and automated marketing scenarios.
Step 2: Gather the Right Data
Imagine a customer walking into a physical store. The salesperson instantly forms an idea based on gender, age, attitude, clothing style, etc. On your website, you must be able to do the same—and even more—thanks to the wealth of available data.
A visitor’s origin, browsing history, location, device type, and more are all signals you can use to personalize their experience.
It’s vital to map out your data sources—to understand what’s usable for personalization by segment, and what’s missing (and needs to be captured).
Step 3: Test and Iterate
Personalization is not a goal—it’s a continuous process.
You need to test the performance of your customer journeys to ensure each scenario meets the expectations of the associated customer segment. Just like people’s tastes change (one day they prefer blue, the next red), so do your customers'.
Adopting a mindset of constant learning is critical. You’ll need to test, measure, adjust… and most importantly, not be afraid to start over.
